Picking up where YSaC left off

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Post 266: Beastly Burden

Celebrities often need more cash quickly when opportunities stop coming their way. Child stars are especially prone to this danger. But I don’t think selling stuff on Craigslist is the best idea. I guess it depends on the celebrity.

And how much cash he or she needs right now.

MICK JAGGER – $15

Framed awsome close up face and upper torso shot picture of a young MICK JAGGER backstage.

Gosh, how high do you think Mick was when that photo was taken? And what does he need $15 for? Cab fare to the airport? Better call Uber, Mick. Have a good weekend.

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3 thoughts on “Post 266: Beastly Burden”

Given that Sir Mick is now like 157 years old, he would have had to be very high to imagine the internet, portable celluar phones, internet on those phones, and then uber, which would be $15 instead of $55 in a regular taxi.

At the age pictured, an expensive cab ride was only a few shillings, not something involving a cashpoint card.

Nurb could feel the rapid pulsing of his heart trying to beat its way out of his chest. He could hear his blood rushing past his ears, throbbing in his temples, as if to mock the swathes and spots and pools of blood that lay still or slowly dripping around the room. He felt exactly as alive as the body that lay crumpled before him on the floor was dead. He felt sick. He felt exhilarated. He felt ashamed and scared and nervous and an entire host of other emotions he couldn’t yet distil in his psychotic fervour. He felt alone.

He hoped Mick would be happy. Nurb did what what he was told to do. He didn’t want to, but he wanted to make Mr. Jagger happy. It wasn’t like he could have expected that it would come to this. He had bought the large photographic print off of some guy on Craigslist. It was an artful photograph of a young Mick Jagger back-stage after a concert. He was leaning up against a painted cinderblock wall in an unzipped leather jacket and unbuttoned silk shirt, his thick proto-mullet slightly dishevelled, head slightly tilted and resting against the wall, eyes closed, mouth slightly open, as if trying to catch the briefest moment of rest after a high-energy concert and before the band had to pack up head off to the next venue. He was, in that ephemeral, captured moment, an island of serenity amid a sea of chaos. Nurb liked what the image represented. It was a reminder to take a solitary moment for yourself to just relax and reflect no matter how crazy the world around you was. This moment was, without any doubt, the craziest he had ever experienced, so Nurb once again closed his eyes, imitating Mick’s pose as best he could, and reflected.

“Hey,” he remembered hearing that first time. It startled him pretty badly, because Nurb lived alone, so hearing someone trying to get his attention while he was in his own bedroom triggered the flight part of his fight-or-flight instinct rather hard. But just as he’d sprung from his desk chair, where he had been browsing the Internet on his computer, the voice spoke again. “Hey, Nurb!” It knew his name.
Nurb froze.
“Yeah, I’m talking to you,” the voice said again. Nurb scanned the room wildly while still trying not to move a muscle. He spotted movement. The picture. The picture of Mick. His eyes were open and looking directly at him. “Come here, mate,” Mick said. It was a picture. Pictures were static. They couldn’t move, and they certainly couldn’t talk. Nurb continued to stare in horror at the image. He must have fallen asleep at his keyboard. He had fallen asleep and this was a weird dream.
“Come on then, I’m not gonna bite,” Mick tried to encourage him. “Couldn’t get through the glass of his picture frame if I wanted to.”
His lips were definitely moving. The picture was talking to him. Mick was talking to him. Well, Nurb thought, if this was a dream, he might as well see what Mick wanted, so he cautiously walked over to the wall on which the picture hung and stood before his idol.
“Uh … yeah?” Nurb muttered nervously.
“Listen,” Mick began. “That dog barking, is that your neighbour’s?”
“Yeah,” Nurb responded. It was such a regular occurrence that he’d learned to tune it out.
“Right, could you be a good bloke, then, ring them up and tell them to maybe quiet that thing down? Bloody hard to get a moment’s peace up here with that racket.”

That was how it started, for it turned out, shocking and bizarre thought it was, it was not a dream. They would talk occasionally, though mostly Mick just wanted to rest peacefully up there on his wall. Periodically, however, he would ask Nurb to do something for him. Close the drapes because it was too bright. Open the window to let some fresh air in. Turn on the radio to the local rock station, see what Stones songs they were playing these days. But the requests gradually started to get more burdensome and strange. Make him a sandwich and just leave it on the table so he could look at it — he couldn’t eat it, after all, he just liked to imagine what it tasted like. Bring a girl home and have her stare at his picture. That part was pretty difficult as Nurb didn’t exactly have game when it came to the ladies, but he managed to convince one anyway. Granted, she was higher than Terence McKenna, and had no idea where she was, but such was her mental state that she had no problem just staring at the image for a solid hour. Nurb had to escort her out before she sobered up and likely freaked out over being in some strange dude’s bedroom.

The requests still seemed innocent enough, no matter how strange they got. That’s why it was only in the immediate aftermath of killing his neighbour’s dog after yet another noise complaint by Mick that he realized just how far things were going. But Mick made it sound perfectly reasonable, and had even given instruction on how to do it surreptitiously so he wouldn’t get caught. Nurb felt terrible, yet some recessed part of him felt relief, and even a perverse sense of glee. It was deeply disturbing, and yet … fascinating. He was at once repulsed by his actions and secretly thrilled by them. Mick encouraged that feeling. Told him to savour it. Told him this was what it meant to feel truly alive, and Nurb suddenly realized just how dull and repetitive and mind-numbing his life had become. Mick was right. Only in the starkest contrast of death could Nurb could truly appreciate and embrace life itself.

Nurb opened his eyes and snapped back into the moment. He had killed more after that, but this was the first human he had killed. He knew some of the things he felt, and he knew he shouldn’t be feeling many of them, because they were things normal people shouldn’t feel in these situations. He could only stand over the body and stare and try and work out what was going on inside of him. Had he let this go too far? Was Mick really right after all, or had Nurb merely let him infect his brain and make him think he was right? His ears were ringing. He felt as though he might pass out. The true realization of what he had just done — what he had been doing — began to slowly eat away at the fringes of his consciousness, seeping into his thoughts. Mick wasn’t right. Mick wasn’t right at all, and he had made Nurb not right in the head.

Nurb looked at the knife in his hand. The once-shiny blade was slick with sticky, red blood. A coagulated droplet hung off the tip, bobbing to and fro as the knife moved. Nurb was numb. Overwhelmed with conflicting emotions, shocked at his own actions, he was just shutting down inside. He began to walk away, still staring at the knife, now a symbol of the depths to which his depravity had fallen. Through the intense ringing in his ears, Nurb hadn’t even heard the blaring of the sirens, nor the orders repeatedly barked by the police officers with increasing intensity, so in his last thoughts, he wasn’t even surprised that he didn’t feel the bullets ripping through his body. He fell to the floor. He didn’t feel that, either.

Police officers were standing over him. One stepped on his wrist and took the knife away from him. Another was asking him questions. Why did he do it? Why, indeed? “Mick,” Nurb managed to croak out. “Mick Jagger told me to.” He felt like he had to at least tell the truth. They had to destroy the picture.

And then darkness began to consume him, and he thought about how his blood was now mingling with his victim’s. Somehow, it felt right.

—

Officer Bilge searched Nurb’s bedroom. The guy was obviously either crazy or stoned out of his mind on one of those new designer drugs that made you eat people’s faces off. Mick Jagger told him to kill! That was a new one. Usually it was God or Satan or some cult figure. The only evidence a rock star was involved was a framed picture of a young Mick on the guy’s wall. To be fair, it was a pretty good picture from the Stones’ early days. Mick was leaning up against a painted cinderblock wall in an unzipped leather jacket and unbuttoned silk shirt, his thick proto-mullet slightly dishevelled, head slightly tilted and resting against the wall, eyes and mouth closed, and his lips ever-so-slightly upturned in the briefest of Mona Lisa smiles, as if catching his breath post-concert while reflecting on a job well done. Officer Bilge was a huge Stones fan, and he liked this picture. He removed it from the wall to be tagged for evidence, and wondered if, when this investigation was all over with, his sergeant would let him keep it.

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The Box — Best Comments from the Week(s) Past

The Box is Broken. Sorry about that. Will try to update again some day.

From Monday August 17--

I always thought that T-shirt time was an individual activity, not a group sport. Today, I learned something.